This farm dairy effluent (FDE) risk layer is designed to guide the selection of appropriate rates and depths for FDE application to land. Application rates and depths to accompany this layer are specified within material produced by Dairy NZ. This layer is based on regional soil mapping (SMAP – Maanaki Whenua) designed to be used at 1:50,000 scale. As such the risk classification may not provide sufficient resolution to identify specific property scale risks associated with FDE application. Consequently, property scale information should support the use of information derived from this risk layer. This risk classification differs from that contained in the Regional Water Plan (RWP - 2010) and previously used to guide FDE application in Southland. Changes are a result of the RWP being superseded and the adoption of Manaaki Whenua’s SMAP effluent risk categories. The SMAP classification does not identify any areas of Class A soils in Southland, the majority of what was previously identified as Class A is now identified as Class B by SMAP and consequently this layer. This has no impact on guidance around FDE application as the suggested rates and depths are the same for both the A and B classes (Dairy NZ). This layer does not adequately identify risks associated with artificial drainage or other soil bypass flow. Consequently, property specific information may be required to characterise and demonstrate mitigation of these risks. An additional change is to the extent of Class E soils. SMAP identifies only very small areas of Class E soils, we considered this was inadequate for identifying soils highly prone to nutrient leaching. We have used the SMAP nutrient leaching and soil depth classifications to identify “high risk” soils within Class D. Consents recommend these areas of ‘high risk’ soil are treated the same as Class E for management purposes. For this reason and to aid in simplicity of use, these Class D High risk areas have been redefined as Class E, to make the applicable restrictions more clear. Should an application propose to apply effluent at greater depths than what is recommended for Class E, Consents will require the application to be supported with site specific scientific evidence with regard to risk and application depths. Class C has been identified in this layer using LiDAR data, land with slope greater than 7 degrees has been assigned to Class C. The slope layer has been smoothed to reduce overly-fine differentiations. As a consequence, the slope layer will not align exactly with the unsmoothed layer available elsewhere on Environment Southland and LINZ websites. The combination of LiDAR-slope layer and SMAP data was combined to create the final product. For more information and to download the fact sheets associated with the SMAP data, visit Landcare research: https://smap.landcareresearch.co.nz/.

The Topoclimate South Project was a community funded initiative established by local focus group "Crops for Southland". The aim of the project was to provide detailed resource information for the Southland region at a scale of 1:50,000 to enable better land use decisions to be made. More information can be accessed here: https://greatsouth.nz/resources/topoclimate-soil-information-sheets

The information provided is derived from Environment Southland's Selected Land Use Sites (SLUS) register only and is made available to you under the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987. Environment Southland has made every effort to ensure the accuracy of the location, extent, and relevant information about each HAIL activity on the register, however this information is subject to change as new information is made available to ES. This data set is live and updated daily.Additional records for your site may be held by the territorial authority (Gore District Council, Invercargill City Council, or Southland District Council); Compliance with R6.2 of the Resource Management (National Environmental Standard for Assessing and Managing Contaminants in Soil to Protect Human Health) Regulations 2011 (NES) requires that territorial authority records are searched in addition to the SLUS register.We cannot accept any liability arising from the absence of information from our registers and if your site is not on the SLUS register this does not mean that a HAIL activity has not occurred there. We advise clients to engage the services of a suitably qualified and experienced contaminated land specialist where uncertainty exists.Check our Contaminated Land page for more information.

Southland’s physiographic zones allow us to better understand why we have variations in water quality in different areas. Southland has been divided into nine different zones according to factors such as soil type, geology and topography. We can then target solutions to higher risk areas as opposed to a region-wide, generalised approach. This layer was developed as part of the Water and Land 2020 & beyond project. For more information and to download the fact sheets visit Physiographics of Southland - Environment Southland (es.govt.nz)

How this dataset was created

A. A series of 31 satellite images was acquired between February and October 2017. These were from Sentinel-2A and -2B and Landsat-8. Each image was cloud-masked and then classified separately into land cover classes.

B. A rule-set was used to draw together evidence from the time-series of 31 per-pixel land cover classifications into a single per-pixel land use map representing winter 2017.The term ‘land use’ pertains primarily to the agricultural classes that are the main focus of this work. The map also includes classes outside the agricultural area which are not formally land use classes, but are simply the dominant land cover class at that pixel through time. The classes are:

Agricultural classes – winter forage

WF kale

WF other brassica and swede

WF fodder beet

WF cereal

Unknown/other winter grazing – Intensive winter grazing on pasture or other unidentified winter crop

Agricultural classes – non-forage

Agricultural bare soil – Bare for an extended period April to July

Crop residue, dead vegetation – Crop residue or dead vegetation for an extended period April to July

Autumn-planted crop or pasture – Includes arable crops and pasture renewal

Pasture – improved

Pasture – unimproved/poor quality/low cover – Generally grazed, though there is a meeting point between this class and the non-agricultural (mostly ungrazed) class that includes tussockland.

Unknown agriculture – Including mixed classes, scrubby pasture, narrow shelterbelts within a pasture/crop pixel

Non-agricultural classes

Forest and scrub – Both native and exotic, including forestry

Tussockland, herbfield, alpine shrubland – Essentially ungrazed, though there is a meeting point between this class and the agricultural unimproved pasture class.

Water – Lakes, rivers, estuaries

Snow, ice

Rock, scree, gravel, sand

Hill country/non-agricultural bare soil – For example, land slips. Can be an overlap with the rock/gravel class in silty scree margins

Deep shadow – Insufficient reflection of light to determine land cover class – generally in steep areas

Urban, industrial

C. A GIS-format paddock boundary map (polygons) was derived from a selected subset of the time-series satellite images. The paddock boundary map covers only those areas considered to be ‘agricultural’ (rather than the whole Southland region, which also includes large alpine and forested areas). This polygon layer was imposed on the per-pixel land use map described in B above. A rule set was used to decide on a final land use classification for each paddock polygon, based on the land use classes of the set of pixels within it. The final output uses the same set of classes as listed in B.

Created for Environment Southland by Landcare Research - Heather North, Stella Bellis & David Pairman, May 2018

The amount of shaking felt in any given earthquake varies with the strength of the subsoil and underlying rock at the location. The soil and rock condition has been mapped as an indicator of the capacity for amplified shaking.Generally, floodplain soils have the potential to amplify shaking. As such, it is likely that in much of Southland the severity of shaking (and potential damage) will be greater than what is predicted or modelled for various earthquake scenarios.Reports:Amplified ground shaking and liquefaction susceptibility, Invercargill City - January 2012 (PDF, 2.3MB)Geological hazards – Southland District Council Lifelines Study - July 2006 (PDF, 5.8MB)Note: The methodology that was used in these reports may not hold today after knowledge gained from the Christchurch earthquakes and how that may relate to underlying assumptions regarding Southland. This data was captured at a scale of 1:250,000 (boundaries are indicative).